Here's the video of the poem the teacher played for the students. I recommend using headphones. I think it's a sincere effort at poetic polemic, but the "n-word" is said out loud.
As for the firing, I don't like seeing teachers fired, but I don't understand how a teacher could think that could be played out loud in class.
Is the unexpurgated "Huckleberry Finn" read in schools anymore? The culture has changed, and the taboo on using the word has become much more intense, so that saying it even when decrying its use is considered a terrible offense.
ADDED: Joanne Jacobs blogged about Hawn's firing, here. She says "there’s more to the story":
Director of Schools David Cox said it was fine for Matthew Hawn to teach about “white privilege,” but not to deny students “access to varying points of view.” Hawn told the board “there was no credible source for a different point of view” to those expressed by Coates and Lacey.
Coates’ essay alleged that Donald Trump’s “ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power”.... There’s no other point of view? Lacey’s poem makes many claims, such as that the prison system is an extension of slavery, affirmative action is fair, reverse racism doesn’t exist and more.... Again, no other point of view?...
... I wonder at a teacher with eight years of experience who doesn’t understand what it means to teach diverse viewpoints. In defiance of state bans on teaching ideas derived from critical race theory, more than 5,000 teachers have pledged to teach “the truth about this country,” states the Zinn Education Project. The “truth” is that “structural racism is a defining characteristic of our society today.” It’s not a point of view to the true believers.
Liberal democracies don’t try to make everyone agree, writes Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic. Critical race theory’s “more facile popularizers share with Marxists the deep conviction that their way of seeing the world is the only way worth seeing the world,” Applebaum writes....
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9 comments:
A tip on commenting on this post in a way that I will publish: Don't write out the word known as "the n-word."
Rooke writs:
"Just this past year, I taught the complete Huck Finn to 7th and 8th graders at a small Classical Catholic school in Connecticut. We did not read that word out loud, but the word was there on the page for the students to see. There were no problems at all. Jim is their moral hero.
"My class was all white or Hispanic. Last time I taught the book there was one black student (Haitian American)."
Bill writes:
I’m a liberal, and a member of ACLU since Skokie, but I agree with some on the right, like Eugene Volokh, and those on the left who defend using words, any and all words, in discussions of issues, in study of literature, in legal arguments. And there’s no problem in subgroups using words in songs, or conversation.
Anyone who cannot or will not distinguish between appropriate uses and inappropriate uses needs to grow up and learn the art of living in society.
Context is all.
Temujin writes (about Huck Finn):
"It would seem to me that the 'n'-word used so casually in the language as it was in the book, is a key part of the lesson of that book. To hide it, or remove the book entirely is to lose the lesson. How are the young to understand how insidious and pervasive the hate and ignorance was if they cannot see the example, feel the example? That seems pretty obvious, no?"
I'll respond:
We've arrived where we are and must work from there. Schools have to control what they let reach their students, and I don't think children should be loaded up with hate and pessimism. That's the problem with Critical Race theory. And the teachers need to know what the standards are and follow them. The "n-word" isn't appropriate for the classroom these days, and the teacher doesn't get to invent her own standards. The kids are compelled to go to school and the teacher has a lot of power over them. The classroom can't be appropriated by every teacher with his or her independent ideas of what the kids ought to hear. A classroom isn't the teacher's personal soapbox! Now, I wouldn't fire this teacher just for showing that video, but there may be a lot more to this story.
Amadeus 48 writes:
"I am completely open to the fact that things were different in the past, and that we can understand how humanity has evolved by reading unexpurgated texts from the past, both fictional and factual. From time to time even cultured and refined people would use vulgar words, usually to describe vulgar things. As “f*ck” has come forward (read “The Naked and the Dead” for Norman Mailer’s fictional description of how “fugged up” things were in WWII), the n-word has retreated in our discourse, but people—not so long ago—used to use the n-word in scholarly situations. See Randall Kennedy’s “N-word: the Strange History of a Troublesome Word” for a full examination of That Which May Not Now Be Said. I would say that the retreat is priggish and essentially juvenile.
"“Huckleberry Finn” is a depiction of the way that poor, uncultured, vulgar white people talked in small-town Missouri in the mid-nineteenth century. Compare the narrative and prose style of “Tom Sawyer”, which is much more civilized and created for a different purpose. The point about Huck—and Jim, too—is that they are good people, no matter how they may have been under-schooled and miseducated and no matter if they casually throw around the n-word. By contrast with Huck, is there a more degenerate person in “Huckleberry Finn” than Huck’s father, Pap?
"In the prior centuries, cultured people and theater impressarios used to produce altered versions of Shakespeare’s plays, most notoriously “King Lear”, where the endings were changed to suit audience preferences and sentiments. Let’s imagine that the only copies of these plays that came down to us were these sentimentalized versions. That would be a disaster, glorifying the tastes and mores of intervening centuries at the expense of the creator and his times. And then we have the silly example of bowdlerized versions of Chaucer and Shakespeare. As the ladies in “The Music Man” say about Marion the Librarian’s mentor, “He gave River City the library building, but he left all the book to her: Chaucer! Rabelais! Balzac!!”
"The priggishness of modern elites about a vulgar epithet—which no one would use in polite social discourse—is absurd. They should take their guilt-ridden personas and raise money for the Black Panthers, but leave the rest of us alone. And as to the question, “How would you like to be called n-word?”, I respond, “I have been called worse by people who knew less, and it didn’t hurt me at all.”"
Irving writes:
You posted:
“The culture has changed, and the taboo on using the word has become much more intense, so that saying it even when decrying its use is considered a terrible offense.”
And to our detriment. Twenty years ago, I volunteered twice a week at a drop-in center for homeless youth. My task on Mondays was Movie Night. I would rent a film and bring it to the drop-in center along with microwave popcorn, movie candy and sodas. It was a big deal for the kids as every Monday when I arrived, they would excitedly ask me what that night’s movie was*. I brought a vast variety of films over the years, but the movie night that I remember with any detail was the night I showed “To Kill a Mockingbird”. As with all of the other films I’d shown, this one was uneventful. That is until a kid – just passing by – heard the n-word. Kid went ballistic telling us all that we should turn the movie off because that word was used. The case managers explained the importance of context and that he should consider joining us to watch the rest of the film. He angrily declined and it took awhile for them to calm him down.
When a word cannot be used in an appropriate context in order to educate folks about historical racism, as a society, we become a bit more stupid and a lot more reactionary.
Best,
Irving
* PS Upon further reflection, I do recall the night I brought the film “Little Shop of Horrors”. When I arrived, a group of young females came up to me and asked what the movie was. I told them “Little Shop of Horrors”. Their immediate responses was, “Little shop of Whores? That’s just nasty! You can’t be showing something like that!” So with exaggerated pronunciation I repeated, “No, no, no, Little Shop of Hor-rors.” After a second or two of silent reflection, they all had a good laugh. A bit later, I was asked the same question by a group of young males and when I responded with “Little Shop of Horrors”, in unison they all replied, “Alright!”
Temujin responds to my comments (above):
"I don't disagree with your points. I think I was unclear in my comment. I felt that it was fine, and probably even good to let the children read Huck Finn and see that word on their own. In their own space. Not to be read aloud in class. Let their minds grasp it and see how that word has been used. In class, however, I think the discussion would need to be more careful, and I agree that the word should not be used. Not because the kids will turn into stone, but because in a room of 25 or so kids, you cannot possibly manage all of their feelings and apprehensions.
"But I'm left wondering, how did we survive it? And why could we be fine with learning it, talking about it, when today they fear even hearing a word? And how are we preparing this generation in any way for the outside world, which is a very unpredictable and non-controlled space?
"Another discussion for another post."
Jack wrote:
"When I was 4 years old, older neighbor boys were gathered on the grass reciting “Eenie, meanie, miny, mo, catch a N-word by the toe” etc. They all chuckled nervously. I didn’t understand. When I went home for lunch I asked what the word meant. She replied without hesitation, “It’s a bad word about colored people to say they are different and inferior. As Christians we believe all people are equal in the eyes of God and we believe the same. You should not repeat that word.” That was it. I have never used that word since.
"Separately, I feel sorry for this woman. She has so many negative half takes in her mind that she seems emotionally crippled. I’d like to see the class break down each line in her poem to show her how she is portraying only the negative side of every thing she speaks of. Someone who only sees the negative side of life will drive themselves crazy whether they are black, white, brown, or green."
I'll add:
I had a similar experience with "eeny meeny" — it was just a nonsense word in that only context and the first time I heard that black people don't like it was the last time I ever said it, even though I had no idea whatsoever why black people didn't like it. Just knowing it was a bad word was enough.
I grew up in a place that I later learned black people consider the south. (Everyone I knew considered Delaware a "mid-Atlantic state.") And I never heard the n-word used as outside of the counting-out rhyme. I did hear black men addressed as "boy" — but not in a mean way, just as if that was conventional form of address. It was more like the now passé practice of calling the waiter "garçon."
Carl writes:
"I never heard it the way described in the comment, and I’m feeling quite old today, my 64th birthday(!). It was always “catch a tiger by the toe” - quite an accomplishment if one could do it, what with claws and other defenses a tiger has. Like … teeth. Never made any sense anyway, it was just a way to pick between multiple choices in a somewhat arbitrary manner if you didn’t think about it too hard, which most kids on a playground don’t."
I say:
You can see how "tiger" became the replacement for a word with many of 4 of the same letters.
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